The above-mentioned mixed injection work, which is directly related to the condition of the patient, has to be executed through very careful procedures. In particular, in the case of a powerful drug such as an anticancer agent, the agents constituting the materials thereof before mixing or the medicine prepared by mixed injection may, more often than not, harm the health of a person in normal health when taken inadvertently. In view of this, Japanese Society of Hospital Pharmacists, for example, has publicized “A Guideline for Preparing Injection drugs for Hospitalized Patients (December, 2000),” according to which, in order to secure the effectiveness and safety of a medicine, it is necessary to check the propriety of the prescription such as the applied dose, dosing method, dosing rate, and dosing system based on the patient information. When there is any doubt, it is necessary to refer to the prescribing physician before performing the medicine preparation work.
The injection drug is prepared by the following procedures and method. That is, the injection medicine order input by the doctor is output as an injection drug prescription within a predetermined period of time or at a predetermined time by a system totally controlled by a computer, and the medicine preparation is generally performed in the following order: 1. Prescription inspection and instruction regarding measurement (mixing); 2. Pre-inspection; 3. Measurement preparation; 4. Germ-free adjustment (mixing with infusion solution); 5. Post-mixing inspection and label attachment; 6. Counting (individual setting) and label affixation; and 7. Final inspection.
In this way, in the mixed injection work, inspection has to be performed for each of a number of stages taking safety into consideration. Above all, the above-mentioned steps of 2. Pre-inspection and 3. Germ-free adjustment are important. Regarding 3. Germ-free adjustment, checking (inspection) has to be performed at various stages of the method (checking of the medicines to be mixed, the way of mixing, the degree of oscillation, oscillation time, etc.). In particular, it is obvious that an error in the selection of the medicines used for mixed injection or an error in the amount of medicine leads to a fatal result. In view of this, in the pre-inspection, the medicine and the infusion solution prescribed and stored for the patient, and the medicine and the infusion solution to be actually subjected to mixed injection, are checked through comparison. Regarding the mixed injection work, there has conventionally been known a prescribed medicine preparation support system (Patent Document 1) in which there are provided a master database storing master data on a large number of medicines, and a preparation pattern storage means storing a plurality of types of medicine preparation patterns set beforehand, each preparation pattern indicating the procedures for preparing a plurality of kinds of medicine to be administrated to the patient at one time and accommodating the same in a support container and using as parameters a part or all of the following factors: presence/absence of solid medicine, presence/absence of liquid medicine, presence/absence of solvent, presence/absence of diluent, and the kind of supply container; the medicine preparation procedures, which includes a plurality of steps, include the step of measuring the initial weight of the supply container and the step of measuring the final weight of the supply container after preparation of the mixed injection, whereby the initial weight and the final weight are compared with each other to check whether the applied dose of the medicine constituting the mixed injection material has been proper or not.
In the conventional technology disclosed in Patent Document 1, the quantitative control of the medicines used are effected accurately as described above, and hence this technique is excellent as a prescription medicine preparation support system for an anticancer agent or the like, of which the quantitative control of medicines is effected with particular strictness.
Patent Document 1: JP 2004-208842 A